Artistic perspectives shed light on addiction
Perhaps you’ve seen the photos of meth addicts on billboards or public service announcements: sunken eyes, bad skin, missing teeth. They seem designed to make you turn away and say, “That’s not me. I could never be that, do that.” But the portrait of one particular meth addict that emerges from 68 poems created by Assistant Professor Pauline Sameshima does the opposite. Based on transcripts of interviews with Gabriel, a Washington woman who was an addict for 10 years and had been in recovery for about six, the poems draw the reader in.

